While Jerry sweated, Chief Superintendent Crispin, head of the local police, breathlessly considered an item of information just passed into his hands. He needed, he decided, to go to the very top man on the racecourse, if the most satisfactory results were to be achieved.
The top man on any racecourse, the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club, was lunching a party of eminent overseas visitors in a private dining-room when Chief Superintendent Crispin interrupted the roast saddle of lamb.
‘I want to speak to you urgently, sir,’ the policeman said, bending down to the Turf’s top ear.
Sir William Westerland rested his bland gaze briefly on the amount of brass on the navy-blue uniform.
‘You’re in charge here?’
‘Yes, sir. Can we talk privately?’
‘I suppose so, if it’s important.’
Sir William rose, glanced regretfully at his half-eaten lunch, and led the policeman to the outdoor section of his private box high in the grandstand. The two men stood hunched in the chilly air, and spoke against the background noise of the swelling crowd and the shouts of the bookmakers offering odds on the approaching first race.
Crispin said, ‘It’s about the Birmingham bank robbery, sir.’
‘But that happened more than a year ago,’ Westerland protested.
‘Some of the stolen notes have turned up here, today, on the racecourse.’
Westerland frowned, not needing to be told details. The blasting open of the supposedly impregnable vault, the theft of more than three and a half million, the violent getaway of the thieves, all had been given wider coverage than the death of Nelson.
Four men and a small boy had been killed by the explosion outwards of the bank wall, and two housewives and two young policemen had been gunned down later. The thieves had arrived in a fire engine. Before the crashing echoes died, they had dived into the ruins to carry out the vault’s contents for ‘safe-keeping’ and driven clear away with the loot. They were suspected only at the very last moment by a puzzled constable, whose order to halt had been answered by a spray of machine-gun bullets. Only one of the gang had been recognised, caught, tried and sentenced to thirty years; and of that he had served precisely thirty days before making a spectacular escape. Recapturing him, and catching his confederates, was a number one police priority.
‘It’s the first lead we’ve had for months,’ Crispin said earnestly. ‘If we can catch whoever came here with the hot money...’
Westerland looked down at the scurrying thousands.
‘Pretty hopeless, I’d have thought,’ he said.
‘No, sir.’ Crispin shook his neat greying head. ‘A sharp-eyed checker in the Tote spotted one of the notes, and now they’ve found nine more. One of the sellers remembers selling a ticket for a hundred early on to a man who paid in notes which felt new, although they had been roughly creased and wrinkled.’
‘But even so—’
‘She remembers what he looks like, and says he backed only one horse to win, which is unusual on Grand National day.’
‘Which horse?’
‘Haunted House, sir. And so, sir, if Haunted House wins, our fellow will bring his ticket with its single big bet to the pay-out, and we will have him.’
‘But,’ Westerland objected, ‘what if Haunted House doesn’t win?’
Crispin gazed at him steadily. ‘We want you to arrange that Haunted House does win. We want you to fix the Grand National.’
Down in Tattersall’s enclosure, Austin Dartmouth Glenn passed two hot bank notes to a bookmaker who stuffed them busily into his satchel without looking and issued a ticket to win on Spotted Tulip at eight to one in the first. In the noise, haste and flurry of the last five minutes before the first race, Austin elbowed his way up the stands to find the best view of his money on the hoof, only to see it finish lame and last. Austin tore up his ticket in disgust and threw the pieces to the wind.
In the changing-room, Jerry Springwood reluctantly climbed into his thin white breeches and fumbled with the buttons on his shiny red-and-white striped colours. His mind was filling like a well with panic, the terrible desire to cut and run growing deeper and deadlier with every passing minute. He had difficulty in concentrating and virtually did not hear when anyone spoke to him. His hands trembled. He felt cold. There was another hour to live through before he would have to force himself out to the parade ring, onto the horse, down to the start and right round those demanding four and a half miles with their thirty huge fences.
I can’t do it, he thought numbly. I can’t face it. Where can I hide?
The four stewards in charge of the meeting sat gloomily round their large table, reacting with varying degrees of incredulity and uneasiness to the urgings of Chief Superintendent Crispin.
‘There’s no precedent,’ said one.
‘It’s out of the question. There isn’t time,’ said another.
A third said, ‘You’d never get the trainers to agree.’
‘And what about the owners?’ asked a fourth.
Crispin held racing in as little esteem as crooked politicians and considered that catching the Birmingham mob was of far greater social importance than any horse finishing first. His inner outrage at the obstructive reaction of the stewards seeped unmistakably into his voice.
‘The Birmingham robbers murdered nine people,’ he said forcefully. ‘Everyone has a public duty to help the police catch them.’
Surely not to the extent of ruining the Grand National, insisted the stewards.
‘I understand,’ Crispin said, ‘that in steeplechasing in general, few stud values are involved, and in this year’s National the horses are all geldings. It is not as if we were asking you to spoil the Stud Book by fixing the Derby.’
‘All the same, it would be unfair on the betting public,’ said the stewards.
‘The people who died were part of the betting public. The next people to die, in the next violent bank raid, will also be the betting public’
Sir William Westerland listened to the arguments with his bland expression unimpaired. He had gone far in life by not declaring his views before everyone else had bared their breasts, their opinions and their weaknesses. His mild subsequent observations had a way of being received as revealed truth, when they were basically only unemotional common sense. He watched Crispin and his fellow stewards heat up into emphasis and hubbub, and begin to slide towards prejudice and hostility. He sighed internally, looked at his watch and noisily cleared his throat.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said calmly and distinctly, ‘before we reach a decision, I think we should consider the following points. First, possibility. Second, secrecy. Third, consequences.’
Stewards and policeman looked at him with united relief.
‘Jump jockeys,’ Westerland said, ‘are individuals. Who do you think is going to persuade them to fix the race?’
No answer.
‘Who can say that Haunted House will not fall?’
No answer.
‘How long do you suppose it would be before someone told the press? Do we want the uproar which would follow?’
No answer, but a great shaking of stewardly heads.
‘But if we refuse Chief Superintendent Crispin’s request, how would we feel if another bank were blown apart and more innocent people killed, knowing we took no action to prevent it?’
The meeting looked at him in silence, awaiting his lead.
Jerry Springwood’s head felt like a balloon floating somewhere above his uncoordinated body. The call of ‘Jockeys out, please’ had found him still unable to think of a way of escape. Too many people knew him. How could I run? he thought. How can I scramble to the gate and find a taxi when everyone knows I should be walking out to ride Haunted House? Can I faint? he thought. Can I say I’m ill? He found himself going out with the others, his leaden legs trudging automatically while his spirit wilted. He stood in the parade ring with his mouth dry and his eyes feeling like gritty holes in his skull, not hearing the nervously henrty pre-race chit-chat of owner and trainer. I can’t, he thought. I can’t.